Possible Evidence of Sloth Butchery: Results from a Faunal Analysis of Padre Nuestro Cavern, Dominican Republic

Summary

Between 2005 and 2010, dive teams from the Indiana University Bloomington Center for Underwater Science performed surface collections of the entrance chamber to Padre Nuestro Cavern, a submerged freshwater limestone cavern located in the East National Park in the southeastern peninsula of the Dominican Republic. They extracted Chican ostionoid ceramics indicating use of the cave by the Taino culture (ca. AD 1000-1492), Casimiroid lithics indicative of the Archaic culture (ca. 6000-500 BC), and faunal remains including extinct sloth (Parocnus serus, Acratocnus ye), extinct platyrrhine monkey (Antillothris bernensis), and various other terrestrial and marine taxa. This paper presents the results of the faunal analysis, suggesting which taxa were deposited in an archaeological context, and discusses the bone surface modifications present on numerous sloth bones that may represent evidence for butchery by Archaic groups.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

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